


In the Light

by mybelovedcheshire



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M, i abhor myself for my florid prose, this is book verse, this is not a modern au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 22:59:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mybelovedcheshire/pseuds/mybelovedcheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire escorts an exhausted Enjolras home, and stays the night to keep an eye on him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Light

“Enjolras!” Courfeyrac called out. “Come and join us! Revolution can wait an evening more.”

Enjolras turned and seemed to sway on the spot. Revolution would wait for no one -- not for a night’s sleep, and not for a few hours of gaiety. He could feel the whole of Paris surging around him, and it drove him on through the dark hours of the morning, writing letters to Aix and Lyon and Nantes. 

“He doesn’t need drink,” Combeferre interrupted. “You need sleep. Go home, Enjolras.”

And how he would have loved to. 

Grantaire watched him thoughtfully. For all his handsomeness, Enjolras looked dead on his feet. “As if he could make it,” he added. “You’ll be robbed and left to rot in a ditch if you stumble along like that.”

“You would know,” Feuilly smirked. Joly and Bossuet laughed. 

“I’m not carrying anything of value,” Enjolras told them, trying to straighten up. He couldn’t remember how many hours it had been -- thirty? Perhaps forty since he’d even been back to his lodging. It hadn’t mattered -- it still didn’t matter. He could drag himself to the back room of the café and rest there until morning. And even then, he had things to do. 

Grantaire moved closer while he spoke and picked his pocket with practised grace. “A trinket worth more than nothing,” he murmured, holding up a single piece of paper. He didn’t have to open it to guess that it was important. It was curled and wrinkled, like Enjolras had been clutching it tightly in his fist for quite some time. 

“Useless to anyone but me,” Enjolras answered darkly, snatching it out of his hand. 

The fact that he grabbed it so easily was evidence that Grantaire had let him take it. He teased all of the Amis as something of a sport, but even he -- a man who believed in nothing -- had a sense of timing. 

“Or the police. As your watch might be useful to a thief. Come. I’ll walk with you.”

Courfeyrac and Combeferre exchanged a knowing glance and smoothly began to shepherd their friends down the street. 

“Go to sleep, Enjolras!” Joly instructed over his shoulder. “Disease strikes the weary hardest. Check under your tongue for redness!”

Enjolras made a face. “Everyone’s tongues are red!”

“And we’re all doomed for it,” Joly answered mournfully. Grantaire rolled his eyes and Bossuet grabbed the young hypochondriac by his ear. 

“Enough, naysayer,” he chastised. 

The intrepid Amis skipped off under the yellow street lamps, leaving Enjolras to his fate with Grantaire. 

“Come, Citizen,” Grantaire insisted, steering Enjolras in the opposite direction. 

Exhausted though he was, Enjolras’s eyes narrowed and he asked: “What will you do when the world changes beneath your feet?”

“Step over the crack?” Grantaire replied -- but seeing the cold glimmer in the other man’s expression, he softened and added: “Or jump, as necessary.”

Enjolras scoffed. Grantaire’s attitudes and opinions changed like tides -- in and out in a rush, and never constant. He didn’t hold a single conviction; he had no thoughts and no ambition beyond the bottom of every bottle he could find. He was a good friend to the others -- but a useless man. 

As useless as Enjolras’s own feet, which seemed unwilling to lift over and over again from the ground. He stopped and straightened up, taking a deep breath. Grantaire grabbed him by the arm and hauled him along.

“If you stop now, you’ll never make it.”

In the light of day, Enjolras might have protested. In ever darkening twilight, he was inclined to agree. 

“How many days has it been since you slept?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You shouldn’t do this. It’s not healthy.”

“Neither is poverty or despotism.”

“Do you ever talk about anything else?”

No. He didn’t. 

Enjolras stumbled, but found Grantaire already under his arm, shouldering his weight. The shorter, dark-haired man rolled his eyes and smiled. “Some revolutionary you are. How very formidable.”

He was too tired for wit. Too tired for talking, and very nearly too tired to keep his eyes open. His eyelids fluttered. 

“Not long now,” Grantaire murmured, pulling him a fraction of an inch closer to keep him upright. 

Enjolras didn’t think to question how Grantaire knew where to lead him -- he simply allowed himself to be led. It was an irony he could hardly appreciate in his state -- the man of purpose, following along on the heels of the man who had no direction. 

He was hardly conscious when Grantaire at last dumped him in his bed. It wasn’t entirely his fault -- if he’d been left to his own devices, he’d have been awake out of necessity. But with someone to guide him -- someone to catch him as he tripped, to keep him moving forward -- he could close his eyes and slip into the black abyss that waited for him. 

Courfeyrac and Combeferre would have left him then, but never Grantaire. 

He doted. Like a mother or an old maid, he gently removed Enjolras’s coat and vest, folded them, and hung them over the back of chair. He took off the sleeping man’s shoes, and tucked them under the corner of the little bed. He pulled the blankets up to Enjolras’s chin, smiled, and stood back -- pleased with what he could see of his handiwork in the darkness. 

A wall clock ticked in the shadows behind him. He glanced at it, chewed on his lip thoughtfully, and concluded that it was too late to join the others. While he was quite the professional when it came to drinking, he was not invested in running across town for an indulgence. 

He could indulge himself in contentment right where he was. He found a heavy coat to drape over himself and retreated to a chair in the corner. 

When he awoke the following morning, Enjolras was gone. 

Grantaire sat up and winced. He could sleep anywhere if he’d had enough to drink, but last night he’d been as sober as a stone -- and painfully aware of it. Chairs were not meant for sleeping, and- least of all chairs that were as unfailingly rigid as their absent owner. Still it was better than waking up under the table at the café. 

The clock read half past nine. His right eye twitched unhappily and he rubbed it with the heel of his palm. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been up this early, but he found himself utterly unsurprised to learn that Enjolras was already awake.

‘And probably out procuring ammunition,’ he thought with a grimace. He wished his friends would content themselves with playing at revolutionaries -- muttering about liberty and equality in the back room at the Café Musain, and ranting about the downfall of despotism. Nothing good ever came out of actually trying to change the world. 

And as a creature of simple habits, he rationalised that there was no point in trying to change his world either. He had a routine, and his routine never involved going anywhere before noon. 

He stood up, taking the coat with him, and hobbled over to Enjolras’s vacated bed. 

As he drifted off again, he noticed one thing. Unlike his own bed, which forever reeked of wine and hopelessness, Enjolras’s was utterly clean. It smelled like fresh linen and the down it was stuffed with. There was no cologne, no wine, no scent of women -- or even men. Every bed took on the scent of its master after a few weeks, but not this one. It was as if it had never been used, not even by Enjolras. 

Grantaire passed out wondering if the young revolutionary really was as pure as marble all the way down to his bones, or if he slept even less frequently than his friends suspected. 

The truth was a mix of both. Enjolras was uniquely neat for a student, and consistently clean in everything that he did. His room was tidy and organised; his desk was orderly. Courfeyrac called him spartan, but the simple truth was that he had no need for excess and mess was a distraction. As for sleeping -- he didn’t require much of it, and when he did, he found curling up on top of his blanket was generally sufficient.

Grantaire, on the other hand, had commandeered the full length of Enjolras’s bed from top to bottom and cocooned himself in the blankets. He woke up by chance almost five hours later with his face buried in Enjolras’s pillow and a sheet twisted around his leg. 

Enjolras had returned while he slept, and was writing at his desk. 

Grantaire yawned loudly and rolled over. 

Enjolras kept writing. 

“You don’t ever stop, do you?” Grantaire asked from the bed. He wasn’t much inclined to move. 

“There are things to do,” Enjolras answered, pausing to grab an apple and toss it across the room to Grantaire.

Grantaire caught it deftly. “Thank you.”

He wasn’t a thinker. He was intelligent, but he had no interest in the philosophy of the human soul. His only study for years had been women and wine, and had it not been for Enjolras, he’d have lived and died that way. 

But now he found himself sprawled out in Enjolras’s bed, having destroyed that small corner of the room like a localised hurricane. Enjolras had discovered him there -- had left him there -- and had brought him breakfast there, without a word of complaint or acknowledgement because Enjolras was utterly unique among men. 

Grantaire watched him with fascination as he took a bite of the apple and found that in an almost comical sense, his mind was racing with questions whose answers he did not know, and whose solutions he genuinely sought. 

To whom was Enjolras writing? Was that a fountain pen? How does he keep his hair from falling into his eyes? Does he mind that his bed is now occupied? Why hasn’t he made a comment about my presence when he hates me so? How is he invested in his revolution? How does he maintain the strength of his convictions? How did he come by his sense of duty?

How?

The question reverberated in his head. 

Never in his life had Grantaire had faith or religion. He’d never needed it because nothing was unknowable -- until he met Enjolras. 

In the warm light of the afternoon sun, he clutched the apple in all its symbolism and wondered: how?


End file.
